After spending 21 months studying box fabrication and shipping, Fuseproject realized that any improvement to that already lean system would merely be incremental. So instead, the “clever little bag” combines the two packaging components of any shoe sale–the bag and the box–with high-tech ingenuity.
The bag tightly wraps an interior cardboard scaffolding–giving it shape and reducing cardboard use by 65%. Moreover, without that shiny box exterior, there’s no laminated cardboard (which interferes with recycling). There’s no tissue paper inside. And there’s no throw-away plastic bag. The bag itself is made of recycled PET, and it’s non-woven–woven fibers increase density and materials use–and stitched with heat, so that it’s less manufacturing intensive.
The impact: Puma estimates that the bag will slash water, energy, and fuel consumption during manufacturing alone by 60%–in one year, that comes to a savings of 8,500 tons of paper, 20 million mega joules of electricity, 264,000 gallons of fuel, and 264 gallons of water. Ditching the plastic bags will save 275 tons of plastic, and the lighter shipping weight will save another 132,000 gallons of diesel.
The roll-out is planned for next year. After that? Hopefully, the design will become ubiquitous.

Dx1W began as a sar­cas­tic com­ment. The idea came to me in a class in which I was asked to cre­ate an object on “social design”. The assign­ment was one week long and there was no spe­cific con­text. Why would you assume that you can design some­thing to solve a prob­lem for the so called Third World –a world you don’t know– in a week? Well, because Bono has told us so. Didn’t we all just change the world by going to the Live 8 con­certs? Hav­ing this assign­ment in class (in NYU) imme­di­ately fired me up and raised my dis­com­fort lev­els with the attempts from First World agents to solve Third World Prob­lems to nuclear fusion tem­per­a­tures. I decided to do some­thing about it and this is how this com­pe­ti­tion was born.

To set things straight I am not ques­tion­ing the need for aid or the good inten­tions. What really dis­turbs me are the pater­nal­is­tic and mis­in­formed approaches that end up as a waste of resources and cause more harm than good in the long run. This approach to aid has been cri­tiqued before, there’s even a term for this kind of design in acad­e­mia: para­chute design or remote design. What hap­pens when some­one does a para­chute design is that the well and nicely designed objects aimed to “improve” aspects of a com­mu­ni­ties are over­look­ing the real prob­lems and the con­text of that com­mu­nity, and hence, if lucky, they end up as part of the fur­ni­ture or as chil­dren toys (if they are durable). As a side effect the designer is mocked in that com­mu­nity for years to come and will be dubbed “El gringo” from then on, pass­ing that name on to any other white guy that set foot in that vil­lage. Oh we’re such a bunch of smart asses in the devel­op­ing world.

There are of course (and gladly) plenty of suc­cess­ful attempts to help the devel­op­ing world. So why am I focus­ing on the bad? Because there’s more of the Bono and Bob Gel­dorf and Brangelina type of aid out there than of the use­ful ones. Yes, its great to have celebri­ties involved to raise aware­ness but where does all that money go? I don’t see much change here, instead I see how the devel­op­ing goals (you know, the “make poverty his­tory”, have clean water, basic edu­ca­tion) keep being pushed fur­ther into the future.

But there’s some­thing else. Design for the First World shouldn’t be funny. The phrase “Third World minds design­ing for First World Prob­lems” pro­vokes smiles in many includ­ing myself. But why is it funny? Why do we assume that Third World minds shouldn’t be involved in the prob­lems of the First World? In all hon­esty and bold­ness I think we (the Third World) have grown accus­tomed to the top help­ing the bot­tom and because of that we’ve grown lazy. We don’t even think things can be both ways. We can help them! I believe there is a need to re-educate our­selves as devel­op­ing coun­tries and gain agency. Let’s clean the mess in our rooms after we play; our rooms being the whole world.

Fur­ther­more, the prob­lems the First World is hav­ing are and should be our con­cern as well, after all that is where we are head­ing. We’ve cre­ated a cul­ture that relies on aid and we (and them) often dis­card our respon­si­bil­ity in improv­ing our present con­di­tions and shap­ing a bet­ter future. True, there’s a lot on our plate (prob­lems, that is), but there are enough inspir­ing indi­vid­u­als in our com­mu­ni­ties that have stood up and made a dif­fer­ence. It’s time to fol­low their exam­ple and wake up (per­haps in reverse order). Not only are we capa­ble of pro­vid­ing sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to cre­ate a bet­ter and more sus­tain­able soci­ety in both the devel­oped and the devel­op­ing worlds, it is our respon­si­bil­ity as inhab­i­tants of this planet.

Please get in touch if you wanna dis­cuss any­thing regard­ing the com­pe­ti­tion or this topics.

There are lots of things I miss about the late, great graphic designer Alan Fletcher, but the thing I miss the most is arguing with him about design. Some of our most enjoyable arguments involved how to explain design to the 99 percent of the population that Alan pityingly described as “civilians” — in other words, those of us who aren’t lucky enough to be designers. Alan claimed that design only made sense when it was explained visually, because that was how the designer would have conceived it. I argued that words and a few facts, like dates and design movements, could be helpful, too. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Alan snorted. I’d snort back at him, but leafing through a book on the design collection of the Museum für Gestaltung (the Museum of Design) in Zurich makes me wonder whether he was right.

With Mr. Lopez on board, talks became serious very quickly. TBS emphasized how young its audience was, a match with Mr. O’Brien’s core viewers. “The lead-ins would be shows like ‘Family Guy’ and ‘The Office,’ which is great for Conan,” Mr. Polone said. Mr. Lopez has the youngest audience in late night with a median age of 33.